Styled Café

The design concept is based on an idea to create exceptional exhibiting space for people to hang-out and enjoy visual art and objects in an atmosphere where they could relax and in the heart of Bangkok most exciting shopping complex. Counting on 200m2, where you can find vintage furniture, objects, unique design fixtures especially brought to the cafe, a selection of international books and fragrances, etc. We portrayed and designed this space as if we were at home. With a large surface dedicated to a restaurant for 60 people around the area, the cafe welcomes guests as if they were with their own friends where they sit to share gourmet cuisines and drinks.

therefore they created a pop up café through the concept of Installation Art “Seamless Insertion” illustrating ambiances of naughty, fun, bright, exotic, and restfully comfortable. There areas are seamlessly separated in to 9 zones namely Pattern Play, Art Effects, The New Tradition ,Modern Art ,Pretty in Pink ,My Favorite Icon, Fantastic Clasic, Jungle Fever and Library; each of which distinctly illustrate decoration and pattern of designs reflecting artisan living with its own interpretation through an eye of our designer.

The layout plan illustrated a golden section or “phi” ratio that is employed and represented area’s connectivity. This solution is a common mathematical ratio found in nature that can be used to create pleasing, natural looking compositions in own design work. The use of the Golden Ratio crafting this golden section is well documented in art and design throughout history, and can be seen in everything from architecture to the grand masters. By applying a similar working methodology we brought in the design sensibilities to this conceptual pop-up art café.

One Original Tourist Office

From the architect. After the progress of the projects of the Library, the Auditorium and the Tourist office – all projects designed by CG+LSC office – it became evident the necessity of the design and development of landscaping that will bring definition, framework and access to all these buildings.

Although the land where these buildings are implanted is largely delimited by pathways and therefore perfectly independent, the truth is that it relates closely with Quinta do Aido which is contiguous to it. Actually, both are part of an extensive and very visible hillside, which, with a new street and the buildings that are to deploy along its route, needed an urgent treatment to give the village of Cinfães a more qualified urbanity.

The site where the Tourist office is build is a farm, north facing – as all Cinfães Village – which has excellent prospects on the Douro valley and a steep topography. Quinta do Aido, on the other hand, is the natural extension of this land to the west, with the aggravating circumstance of topography be even more complex, having a narrow and steep “valley bottom” that extends over large slopes with severe pending, difficult access and dense vegetation.

The program is relatively simple. The entrance is high and at the bottom of this wide space we can find the employee`s desk.

This monumental piece, presented as an unequivocal sign of modernity, strongly illuminated, also marks its presence by color and its material, which is made of plate cut by laser, forming certainly a attractive element in the region.

LeMay Museum

When entering the exhibit hall at the new LeMay Museum in Tacoma, Wash., visitors may find themselves gazing up at the ceiling as well as taking in the lines of gleaming classic cars. A soaring roof system made with curved glulam beams offers a striking sense of grandeur while simultaneously lending a warm, grounded aesthetic to the vast space.   Nicknamed “America’s Car Museum,” the 165,000-square-foot facility was created to celebrate America’s love affair with the automobile. Across its 4-story, 9-acre campus, the museum will house up to 350 cars, trucks, and motorcycles from private owners, corporations, and the expansive Harold LeMay collection, from a 1906 Cadillac Model M to a 1965 Lotus racecar to a 1983 DeLorean DMC 12. Rotating exhibits, such as a collection of glass hood ornaments, also will be showcased.

Along with displaying some of the world’s most awe-inspiring vehicles, the museum will also serve as a gathering place for car enthusiasts, with meeting spaces, a membership club, a show field and a planned educational center.   The museum’s main hall is essentially a long exhibit floor, almost warehouse-like, but aesthetically enhanced with its wood structure and thoughtful display details. Engineered by Western Wood Structures, the curved roof system was created with 19 glulam frames with 5-1/8-inch glulam purlins spaced 4 feet on center as secondary framing.

The glulam beams, crafted by American Laminators, measure 8-¾ inches by 52-½ inches and arc 104 feet over the displays below. Because the roof curves in two directions, each of the 757 roof purlins is unique, with varying compound miter cuts and varying lengths; each purlin hanger has a different skew and slope.   One-and-one-eighth-inch fully sanded plywood sheathing from Swanson Group Mfg. LLC covers the roof, with ½-inch and 5/8-inch sheets used around corners to meet the 1-1/8-inch thickness requirement while bending around the 17-foot radius of curvature.

Waterproof rigid insulation and a metal roof complete the structure.   The arch design—one of the largest wood moment frames in the world—has a 1-hour fire-resistive rating and follows the “Special Requirements for Seismic Design of Structural Glued Laminated Timber Arch Members and Their Connections in Three-Hinged Arch Systems” from the 2009 National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program provisions.

The provisions are intended to produce ductility in the arch systems by allowing the steel connections to yield plastically during a seismic event and prevent glulam members from failing in a brittle fashion.   At the south end of the structure, the roof system cantilevers over the last glulam arch, supporting the curved fascia and creating a covered outdoor gathering space.   The decision to use glulam beams wasn’t purely aesthetic, as it also was one of several features that allowed some of the cost savings necessary to meet a tight budget, says Alan Grant, co-director of Grant Price Architects in Los Angeles.

Ningbo’s Urban Planning Museums Selected design

Playze and Schmidhuber have been selected as winners of an invited competition to design the Urban Planning Exhibition Center in Ningbo, China. Inspired by the ancient artform of the Chinese ribbon dance, the exhibition center aims to “blur the lines” between citizens and decision makers in a way that grants the public “rare access into the inner-workings of the city” in an effort to strengthen the relationship between local government and community.

The idea of the Chinese “Urban Planning Museums” is the nation’s response to the rapid urban growth occurring in many of its major cities. The museums are intended to communicate city planning and development issues to the public. You can learn more about playze and Schmidhuber’s design, after the break

The Exhibition center anchors the urban district of Ningbo Eastern New City: a fresh suburban swath of equal parts high-rise and high-way, still searching for its own identity. Urbanistically speaking, the new Planning Exhibition Center aims to bring intimacy to these wild new spaces. The building’s faceted perimeter blends horizontally into it’s context, reacting and sometimes mirroring existing site conditions. The four large entrances lead to a lobby space and multi-story atrium. A circular loop passage brings visitors to and from a public roof-terrace, where they bear first witness to the very issues being debated and exhibited below. The loop’s different coves and mounds invite visitors to interact with the building both during the day and at night.

The Chinese ribbon dance (Cai Dai Wu Dao) dates back to the Han Dynasty. A professional ribbon dancer can animate complex figures like wandering dragons in a single movement. Originally performed only for royalty, it emerged as an important medium for communication between different social classes.

Inspired by this ancient artform, the building program, structure and envelope are woven together as a ribbon. Beginning at ground level, the ribbon wraps around the program; it defines volume and circulation-space. It guides visitors through the building, controls light, opens to views of the surroundings. The ribbon links program elements into a fluid sequence of space a deliberate break from more conventional, static, “white box” museums. Instead, the spaces present no clear physical boundaries—they are blended together. This blending merges the visitor’s awareness of the architecture, the exhibitions, the different people and social classes into a contiguous, flowing experience.

The City of Ningbo has a rich history in ceramic production. It was here that the so-called Ceramic Road began, and the city played an important role in the national and international trade of ceramics throughout the civilization’s history. That said, the use of ceramics is not simply an homage to the local traditions of Ningbo; the building’s textured glazed-ceramics also create ephemeral reflections of surrounding cityscape. These reflections animate the facade with varying intensity depending on time of day, season, weather, etc.

From a distance, the building is like a beacon, an attractor. With its form and reflective qualities, the façade modulates visually with its context. Up close, this modulation is also applied in the deployment of the facade system and details. The ceramic screen gradually shifts between being nearly transparent to fully opaque, according to program needs and views to the surroundings; while around exhibition areas the tiles overlap tightly, they open up in gathering areas to allow ample daylight and scenic views. At night, the pattern glows as shadows populate the facade’s curved apertures.

Godfrey hotel

In early 2004, VDTA was commissioned to design a 16‐story extended stay suites hotel at the corner of Lasalle and Huron Streets in Chicago by the site’s original developer, Duke Miglin. It was his desire to employ a staggered truss structural framing system for the building – something new to Chicago – for its speed and efficiency of erection. Construction began in 2007 but the project fell victim to the economic downtown in 2008, topped out with just the first components of exterior cladding installed. For three years the partially constructed structure sat, a rusting, tarp‐wrapped reminder of the Great Recession, an eyesore on the skyline dubbed “The Mummy” by the neighborhood’s residents.

In 2011, Oxford Capital Group examined the structure and saw potential in the unique, forward‐looking staggered steel truss framed design. Working with The Gettys Group, Oxford developed a new upscale “boutique‐lifestyle” hotel concept envisioned for repurposing the partially built structure. With this new concept in-hand, Oxford engaged VDTA to make modifications to the original building design while retaining the iconic design of expressive structural frame and assembly of shifted, taut, rectilinear building masses. The hotel opened in February 2014.

The design of the Godfrey Hotel is a continuing exploration of modernist forms, but this experiment looks to a more muscular approach where the juxtaposition of huge yet apparently weightless masses rest on a gracefully balanced structural skeleton reasserting the indeterminate, an ambiguous condition of modern times in what is a truly unexpected way. The taut metal skinned building forms that shift inward and outward to reveal the expressive structural frame are intentionally daring and honest, a real “Chicago” building, linking to the city’s rich past of architectural innovation

It also is a system where the deep trusses allow a remarkable freedom to express the program of the hotel, where today’s guest is looking for that unique room satisfies their unique needs and preferences. From its base the building form is offset three times, creating rooms of varying depths, creating 26 different room types for a hotel with 221 keys. In addition, the long span trusses create large clear span public and amenity spaces on the 4th floor.

The structural system allows the design to celebrate the human variability its guests, expressing this fact with a form that seemingly defies gravity obeying its own fuzzy logic. It is the exception, along LaSalle Street, that proves the rule that all tall buildings should be boxes no matter what their function.